In the field of remote health monitoring, systems have been developed to enable an individual to contact medical professionals from their dwelling regarding a medical emergency. For example, in various systems, an individual is equipped with an emergency call button that initiates a call or signal to an emergency call center.
The concept of such a system is that if an individual has a health related problem, they can press the emergency call button and emergency medical providers will respond to assist them. However, in some cases, the individual is unable to press the emergency call button, such as when an individual has fallen and cannot reach the button, is rendered unconscious, or is cognitively impaired.
More complex systems have also been designed to monitor medication compliance or check health characteristics of an individual, such as heart rate, body temperature, blood chemistry, blood pressure, respiration, and the like. In these systems, the individual typically has to provide data periodically, such as by telephoning a monitoring center to provide health information to the center or by checking onto a web site or other data collection system.
For example, blood chemistry monitoring systems have been devised where an individual takes a sample of their blood, performs tests on the blood, and provides the results to medical professionals via a telephone line. The blood chemistry information is then reviewed by a medical professional in order to monitor the health of the individual. Neither of the above systems has the capability to detect if someone has become incapacitated and requires assistance.
Additionally, systems have been developed that use sensors within the home to monitor an individual within a dwelling. Typically, these systems include motion sensors, for example, that are connected to a base control system that monitors areas within the dwelling for movement. When a lack of movement is indicated, the system indicates the lack of movement to a remote assistance center that can contact a party to aid the individual. However, not all inactivity indicates that an individual is in need of assistance. For example, an individual can be sitting in a chair for a prolonged period, or lying in bed. These periods may be sufficient to initiate an alert for third party response, but may not actually be an emergency. In some of these systems, the system is designed to allow a third party to intervene to aid the individual according to the analysis of the information received by the remote assistance center.
Some systems also are designed such that the individual being monitored has to actively turn the system on and off (activate/deactivate) when leaving and returning to the dwelling to indicate whether the individual is home or away. This added step can be forgotten in some instances and thereby can cause the system to be ineffective at times.
Further, systems that use a number of sensors to monitor an individual and do analysis on the information collected typically use these sensors in isolation. Further, such systems also monitor the health of the system, and its sensors, based upon the individual sensor activations. That is, a sensor can be activated, but may not be correlated with any other sensors in the system. Accordingly, the certainties of the sensor activations of these systems and/or the determinations of whether to take an action by a system are based upon the reliability and reception of signals from individual sensors.